Harvey Weinstein denied a fair trial as he was ‘poster boy’ of #MeToo motion, lawyer claims

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Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer claimed he was denied a fair trial after he turned the “poster boy” for the #MeToo motion as he requested New York’s highest courtroom to throw out his rape and sexual assault convictions on Wednesday.

In oral arguments earlier than New York’s Court of Appeals, lawyer Arthur Aidala stated the jury within the disgraced movie mogul’s 2020 trial have been unduly influenced when the choose allowed damning testimony from three ladies whose allegations weren’t half of the case.

Mr Aidala claimed Judge James Burke had additionally breached Weinstein’s authorized rights when he dominated that prosecutors might confront Weinstein about separate allegations of sexual misconduct had he taken the stand at trial.

“It was his character that was on trial, it wasn’t the evidence that was on trial,” Mr Aidala advised the judges.

“This is a case of a man courting a woman.”

Weinstein, 71, was convicted of rape and sexual assault in opposition to two ladies who had been pursuing a profession within the movie business on the excessive profile February 2020 trial.

Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years jail. He is incarcerated on the Mohawk Correctional Facility in upstate New York, and was not current on the oral arguments being heard in Albany on Wednesday.

In June 2022, a mid-level appellate courtroom rejected Weinstein’s try and overturn the convictionon related arguments to these introduced on Wednesday.

His enchantment to the seven-judge Court of Appeals panel possible represents his ultimate probability to overturn his New York convictions. The judges will launch their resolution at a later date.

Mr Aidala additionally claimed Weinstein’s convictions ought to be overturned as a result of one of the jurors lied about studying a e book about a “predatory man” throughout jury choice.

He claimed he was denied the prospect to strike her from the jury.

“Our client did not get a fair trial,” he stated.

Mr Aidala’s impassioned arguments that there was no intent by Weinstein to commit sexual assault didn’t seem to persuade the judges.

The problem of whether or not Weinstein’s misbehaviour in the direction of different ladies ought to have been allowed to be raised with the Manhattan jury was taken up by Judge Madeline Singas.

Judge Singas advised Mr Aidala that intent in sexual violence when the events are identified to at least one one other is just not all the time apparent.

She stated: “(Weinstein’s) position, is this is very transactional. ‘I give them movie roles, I invite them to my hotel room, we have consensual sex’.

“The jury has a right to know that when these women are put in that position that he has done this time and time again, and he knows that this is not a consensual situation because he knows these other women haven’t consented to that and have run out.

“And amongst all the power plays, of his power in Hollywood, and his power over their careers, there has to be a different assessment because sexual violence is different in these kinds of cases than in a stranger rape.”

Steven Wu, showing for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, advised the courtroom that Weinstein had no proper to imagine that girls who agreed to return to his resort room would consent to intercourse.

Weinstein was first accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, and finally greater than 80 ladies within the movie business got here ahead to accuse him of non-consensual sexual exercise.

In 2022, Weinstein was convicted in a separate case in California of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and forcible penetration with a overseas object.

He was sentenced to 16 years in jail in that case, and won’t be freed if his New York enchantment is profitable.